The 4 at Fev - www.therhinos.co.uk/news/24442.php#.VRknroakqrV

The 4 at Fev - www.therhinos.co.uk/news/24442.php#.VRknroakqrV

how can teams have a youth policy as once they dont qualify for 19's what do u do with them reserve leagues need to come back or we are gonna lose a lot of youth as we cant keep them and they get no game time.hull fc had mcphereson and shaul was in the same position and if mcphereson hadnt of got injured he would of left hull fc.if youth is the future the rfl need to provide a method to enable clubs to retain fringe/youth players

In the real world folk can have multiple contracts of employment.
Is the Championship not generally part time?
Therefore, nothing illegal for a player to have a playing contract with a championship club & a second contract doing community work for another club.
But I guess that would depend on the RFL rules, mind you we've all seen the mess they're in c.f. last year with Batley & other club(s) IIRC.
As has been said this all stems from the abolition of "A" teams caused by cost issues.
Laurel & Hardy comes to mind.

This should have been stamped out 2 years ago when Swinton and Warrington were doing the same thing, but as Swinton weren't a threat to the top Championship clubs the RFL did nothing. The players who had supposedly signed for Swinton (all 8 of them) were still training with Warrington and in the case of one player Warrington sent him off on loan to London which was strange seeing as he was meant to be a contracted Swinton player !

In this particular case of the Leeds/Fev agreement, it is clear that there is manipulation of the rules happening although whether that amounts to a breach of the rules is another argument altogether. For example, in the announcement about the players joining Fev on the Leeds website it quotes Andy Hay as being grateful to Gary H for allowing the players to join Fev. But, if they had genuinely been released by Leeds and were no longer under their control then they'd be able to sign for whoever they liked as free agents and wouldn't require Gary H to [iallow[/i anything. He'd have no say whatsoever in the matter.

As far as I can see, nowhere have the operational rules around player registration been broken.

These players have a playing contract with Featherstone for 2015, and Featherstone alone. They are not registered with Leeds for 2015. In theory, if they wanted to they could buy out their Featherstone contracts and sign for someone else.

You could argue that the spirit of the operational rules has been broken with this kind of arrangement, which I suspect is where the club(s) who have objected are coming from.

I'll bet you a pound to a penny though, if a similar arrangement had been put in place with Hunslet no-one would have complained as they're not a threat to make the top four.

On the face of it that's correct although we don't know what is happening behind the scenes. For example, do any of these players take part in any Rhinos training sessions (that's against the operational rules) ? Do they receive any form of remuneration from the Rhinos (e.g. retainer) ? I'm not saying they do BTW, just pointing out that there are ways in which the OR's can be broken which are technically very minor but which could be valid cause for complaint by Fev's rivals.

Well it says they've been signed by Fev on a 1 year contract. Not a season long loan. And that they have a deal with Leeds for 2016.

That seems to me that they're Fev players for 2015.

Yes, but then they would have had to have been released from their contract, which it doesn't state anywhere, and they have been working for the Rhinos since, which would suggest they are still under contract. Like I said, how the RFL come up with these I don't know.

Would doing community work for the Leeds Rugby Foundation charity be "working for the Rhinos"?

Matty Nicholson is a Community Development Officer for Leeds Foundation but plays for Fev, well he's struggling with a long-term injury at the moment but there's no dispute that he's a Fev player not a Leeds one.

I do agree that the real problem is being in a halfway house caused by not having either a reseerve team setup or a genuine feeder competition.

As I said before though, of those slated to come back in 2016, how many do we think actually will? I'll start by saying not all of them. I wouldn't be surprised if half of those mentioned never play for Leeds again.

Baldwinson will. Tonks might.

Minns and Foster aren't SL standard, neither are the younger Briscoe or Duckworth IMO.

Keinhorst might get himself a gig at a lower SL side.

So maybe two out of the seven could be Leeds players long term.

Yep. Jonny Wainhouse was (and still is) doing some kind of community role for Leeds for years whilst he played for Hunslet.

Exactly. Leeds have basically offered these players to Fev for a year. Fev are hardly likely going to turn around and refuse them to do community work for Leeds whilst at there club for the season......can you imagine if they told Leeds NO...? What good would that do them?